Research
Faculty of Arts and Education
The Australian Research Council (ARC) plays a key role in the Australian Government's investment in the future prosperity and well-being of the Australian community. The ARC's mission is to advance Australia's capacity to undertake quality research that brings economic, social and cultural benefit to the Australian community.
DP0452030 Professor Baogang He
Title: Western Theory of Deliberative Democracy and Chinese Practice of Participatory and Deliberative
Summary:
This project is aimed to study how various participatory and deliberative institutions are pursued and promoted by peasants and residents in local governance in China. It is the first study that builds a bridge between Western theory of deliberative democracy and Chinese deliberative practice, adding to our knowledge of local participatory institutions in local China, contributing to a better design of, and improvement of, these institutions, and developing lessons and policy implications that will be broadly applicable not only to most parts of China, but also to other developing countries and beyond.
DP0451345 Professor Sanjay Srivastava
Title: Spaces of Becoming: Spatial Strategies and the Formation of Modern Identities in Urban South Asia.
Summary:
The intensification of urbanisation in South Asia calls for new ways of understanding the politics of identity, and social complexity. This project will explore ways in which urban spaces (such as places of worship, streetscapes, markets, festival grounds, procession routes, and 'neighbourhoods') are used by different groups as a fundamental principle of organising social relations, including transmission of culture and creation of identity. This interdisciplinary project argues that historicism - an exclusive temporal emphasis - can not capture the fundamental relationship between spaces and social processes that shapes contemporary cultural and social complexity in South Asia.
DP0451275 Dr Lyn McCredden, Dr FM Devlin-Glass, A/Prof BD Ashcroft
Title: Australian Literature and the Sacred: Contesting the Myth of Australian Secularism
Summary:
The dominant myth of Australian culture has stressed its modern, post-religious secularism. This project, focussing on Australian literature since 1940, challenges this most tenacious myth, current in the wider culture and in Australian literary scholarship. It will investigate how the contemporary sacred is transforming in the context of urgent recent claims to the sacred by indigenous peoples, migrants and women. This project will redefine and systematize what sacredness might mean in a supposedly secular Australian culture. It will produce a new model of the sacred in Australian literary history and make significant interventions in post-colonial debates.
DP0451499 Dr Greg Barton, Professor SM Kenny
Title: Capacity-building in Indonesian Islamic NGOs.
Summary:
This study aims to understand and monitor forms and applications of capacity-building in progressive Islamic/Muslim NGOs in Indonesia, over a four year period, in the context of profound social, economic and political change, in order to better understand how best to strengthen such groups and to assist them to become more effective. It will significantly increase our understanding of the complex cultural issues that influence these groups in their efforts to professionalise, build capacity and contribute to civil society. It will identify areas in which Western misunderstandings of Muslim culture and society have limited the effectiveness of capacity building programs.
DP0666276 Professor William Logan, Dr CD Long, Dr F Qian, Mr KJ Reeves
Title: Remembering Places of Pain and Shame: Conservation of the Asia-Pacific Region's 'Difficult' Heritage of Imprisonment Sites
Dr F Qian APD
Summary:
This project will contribute to theoretical and practical discourses relevant to Australia's cultural heritage industry. Its findings will have implications for the work of national and state industry bodies (Australian Heritage Council, Australian Dept of Environment and Heritage, Heritage Victoria) and professional organisations (Australia ICOMOS). The project findings may lead to concrete results such as the addition of new places to international, national and state heritage registers and their protection for the benefit of the community at large. The project will also provide Early Career Researcher training and enhance possibilities for future research collaboration with heritage and tourism industry partners.
LP0562687 A/Prof CJ Stevens, Mr RM Grove, Dr K Vincs, Dr E Schubert, Dr JM Milne-Home
Title: Intention and Serendipity: Investigating Improvisation, Symbolism and Memory in Creating Australian Contemporary Dance
APA(I) Award(s): 1
Partner Organisation(s):
The Australian Choreographic Centre
The Australia Council of the Arts
Australian Dance Council - Ausdance Inc
Cultural facilities Corporation
Summary:
Contemporary dance is one of the major vehicles through which Australian stories and cultural diversity are communicated. Little is known about the processes that underpin creation and performance of communicative dance works, and less still about processes and stylistic traditions unique to the Australian form. We will investigate cognitive and kinaesthetic processes involved in creating, refining, performing significant works. Combining experimental and practice-based research we examine psychological mechanisms engaged by elite choreographers, and experienced and emerging dancers, and analyse the unique Australian heritage and embodied knowledge evident in leading dancers and choreographers influenced by Gertrud Bodenwieser.
DP0773259 A/Prof RN Bastin
Title: Managing ethnic tensions and developing religious tolerance in South India and Sri Lanka
Summary:
The enhanced knowledge of Australia's neighbours, specifically two countries that have provided significant contributions to Australia's multicultural complexion, as well as an enhanced sense of the issues involved in managing ethnic tensions in a secular state will be the benefits of the study. Both sites have been the objects of previous social and cultural studies, but not compared together in terms of religious tolerance and state control. The research will also strengthen ties between scholars in Australia, India and Sri Lanka, while having application to issues of tolerance and mutual respect between communities in all three countries.
DP0773663 Dr D Kingsbury, Dr MP Leach
Title: Internal and External Sources of Political Instability in East Timor
Summary:
This project is of direct relevance to Australia through its bilateral and multilateral provision of police to assist in the maintenance of East Timor's law and order, through its training of and support for the East Timor Border Patrol Unit, and its training and support of the East Timor defence force, Falintil FDTL. The project also goes to the core of Australia's concerns with regional state maintenance (or conversely, potential state failure), direct bilateral relations with both East Timor and Indonesia, and the triangular relationship between these three states.
DP0771641 A/Prof F Mansouri, A/Prof SM Kenny, Prof DR Walker
Title: Local Governance, Multiculturalism and Active Citizenship: The Case of Arab Muslim Diaspora in the West
Summary:
This project will advance our understanding of the best practice approaches towards the management of intercultural relationships within multicultural communities. It will generate international benchmark data on the management of multicultural spaces and will lead to a range of practical policies for local city councils, NGOs and state governments. The findings will form a robust empirical basis for understanding the optimal way of formulating government NGOs partnerships in the successful implementation of culturally responsive policies. The study will also result in the development of effective policy responses aimed at enhancing active citizenship, social cohesion and intercultural understanding.
LP0775072 A/Prof CA Beavis, Prof CM Bradford, Dr JA O'Mara, Dr C Walsh
Title: Literacy in the digital world of the twenty-first century: learning from computer games.
Collaborating/Partner Organisation(s):
Department of Education & Training
Australian Centre for the Moving Image
The Victorian Association for the Teaching of English
Summary:
The creation of a literate and tech-savvy workforce and community is essential to Australia's future prosperity. By helping teachers better understand and teach ICT-enabled forms of text and literacy, drawing on insights from young people's actual engagement with digital culture in their leisure hours, the project will help strengthen young Australians' capacity to critically evaluate and use ICTs for effective learning and communication. This project will help produce the skills, knowledge and orientations necessary to create smart information use, through developing and strengthening young people's uses and understandings of ICT-based forms of text and literacy.
LP0455056 Dr F Mansouri, Dr MP Leach, Ms DE Smiley
Title: The challenge of managing cultural diversity in education: the case of Arab-Australian youth
Partner Organisation(s):
Brencorp Foundation
Victorian Arabic Social Services (VASS)
Summary:
This project investigates the challenges posed by cultural diversity in multicultural schools. It will focus specifically on students from Arabic-speaking background (ASB) attending secondary schools in the Northern and Western regions of Melbourne. The study will assess whether individual students' attitudes and the schools' structures and pedagogical ideology impact upon ASB students' achievements. In using focus group discussions and attitudinal surveys, the study will also test the cultural appropriateness of such methodological procedures. The study's proposed multi-dimensional model will be tested in order to determine the optimal social environments and inter-ethnic relations needed to successfully fulfil the potential of multicultural education.
LP0455658 Dr S Srivastava, Dr LC Johnson, Prof MF Meehan, Dr FM Devlin-Glass, Mr D de Bruyn
Title: Landscape and Memory: the West Coast of Victoria
APA(I) Award(s): 1
Summary:
The application is for an APAI PhD, located within a wider plan by Deakin University and Experimenta Media Arts to develop an interactive mode of analysis of landscape and design of civic spaces across the west coast and hinterland regions in Victoria. The project will locate development and regional cultural understanding within an enriched historical perspective, drawing on cross-disciplinary research and using digital animation in particular to display the 'presence of the past in the present', to explore and promote distinctive and sustainable modes of living, and to construct visual hypotheses for environmental and cultural development in each area.
Partner Organisation(s):
Experimenta Media Arts Inc.
